


The Wrong Idea

by shewas_theuniverse



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e05 Are You From Pinner?, Eve is in denial, F/F, Flashbacks to Rome, Flowers, London, Mommy Issues, Niko is dead, Tension, Villanelle literally just wants to be looked after, Villaneve, Vulnerable Villanelle, not so graphic violence, they're just in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewas_theuniverse/pseuds/shewas_theuniverse
Summary: Eve has just seen her ex-husband murdered right in front of her eyes and she thinks she knows exactly who’s to blame. She sets out on a mission to find Villanelle, but it doesn’t go to plan, of course.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Kudos: 46





	1. Shock

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever time writing something so please bear with if it's not the easiest read. More than grateful for any feedback so my twitter is @jerdehwhittaker !  
> This is just the first chapter and all of the chapters vary in length massively because I don't know how to not get carried away when I'm writing!  
> I'll update the tags as I add more to it.
> 
> Enjoy x

Numbness, that's all she’s felt for days. The possibility of rekindling her marriage was the last shred of normality in her otherwise chaotic life and now, what little chance there was of working things out had vanished.

When it had happened, she was in a state of shock… well, how else would you expect a person to react when somebody they have loved for years is brutally murdered right in front of their eyes? She soon found herself scrambling to her feet and dashing towards the lifeless body on the floor, sobbing and as she attempted to hold Niko in her arms for one last time.

“Fuck! Niko!”

She knew it was useless, the life had already drained out of his eyes and there was not a single person around to whom she could attribute this horrible act. She looked around for any sign of another human nearby, tried to listen carefully to see if she could hear any passing cars but the sound of her own breathing and her pulse thumping in her ears made it near impossible.

“Somebody!! Please dear god somebody fucking help me!” She screamed. There was nobody nearby, no one but the pigs and the odd chicken roaming around to hear her cries.

In her short search for some sort of clue as to who did this, she noticed a small tag attached to the pitchfork that protruded out of her ex-husband and the words scrawled on it made her stomach churn. No, it couldn’t be, surely not. She carefully tore the tag from the little red ribbon around the pitchfork and stuffed it into her pocket before bolting off to find phone signal or somebody to help, whichever came first.

_Still got it._

The next few days mainly involved giving statements to the police and watching Niko’s family as they began to enter various stages of grief, who would do something like this so out of the blue? Of course, it was only out of the blue to his family as they had no idea about his ex-wife’s career and the potentially dangerous repercussions for him. Eve decided it was for the best to get out of Poland and return home as she was never exactly in the family’s good books.

Eve knew that Niko’s family never really approved of her. He was a good man, born in England to two first generation Polish immigrants and raised to appreciate the simple things in life. He also had a strong aversion to anything violent and his family knew him as a kind, hardworking and morally sound man. Eve, on the other hand was born in England and raised in Connecticut by her English father and Korean mother. From a relatively young age Eve had developed a morbid interest in the criminal mind, hoping to work for MI6 in the tracking and arresting of assassins all over the world. Niko never understood Eve’s obsession with criminality and darkness, he tended to steer clear of becoming tangled in her work issues.

It wasn’t until Eve was on her way back to London that she began to process what had actually happened, it had to have been Villanelle, who else would want to kill Niko? After all, he had been out of trouble in rehab for the past few months. She sat slumped in her plane seat and theories frantically danced around her head. Had Villanelle somehow discovered that Eve was attempting to rekindle her marriage after kissing her the other day on the bus? Was she jealous or simply confused and enraged by the mixed signals Eve was giving off? If the latter was true then Villanelle was in no place to judge after the way she acted in Rome; one minute she was confessing her love for Eve and as soon as it wasn’t reciprocated the neurotic psychopath was back in full force, using the pistol she could have pulled on Raymond. Eve soon found her mind wondering back to that day, the raw vulnerability and strong sense of possession in Villanelle’s eyes and tone as she said those words…

_“You’re mine”_   
_“No.”_   
_“You are, you're mine! Eve?!... I thought you were special”_

She thought of the way Villanelle had treated her that day, as if she was some sort of apprentice, coaxed into killing without being made aware that she had a choice. It made her so angry to find out that she had been manipulated into acting so ruthlessly and it made her head spin when she considered the terrifying thought that maybe she wasn’t so different from the Russian.

The flashbacks from that day were so vivid that they often made the scar on her back throb, a reminder that at least bullet-sized piece of Villanelle will always be a part of her. Although she would never admit it out loud, she knew she killed Raymond to protect Villanelle, not herself or any other innocent lives that would be lost at the hands of The Twelve.

If she allowed herself to pick apart every possible thought process that Villanelle had been through before killing Niko, allowed herself to get further into Villanelle’s twisted mind without coming back to the here and now, she would be at risk of staying on the plane until it was ready to leave for the next flight. However, one of the stewardesses gently snapped Eve out of her catatonic state and helped her gather her things in order to disembark the aircraft. She thanked the lady and put her earphones in, having made a decision. She was going to find the woman who killed her ex-husband and she knew exactly how to go about it.

______________________________________________________

There was something so false about her family’s lifestyle. All smiles and hugs at the village fair in front of everybody but when she found out what her mother had said to Bor’ka about him disappointing the family, she realised family life wasn’t as peachy as it seemed. She had been sitting away from the crowds with her half-brother when he confided in her but the real cause for concern was when Bor’ka began hitting himself violently in response to their mother’s comments. That was when she knew, she couldn’t let this innocent little boy turn out like her; destructive and dark due to the emotional abuse he had to endure. It had destroyed her mentally and despite her psychopathic tendencies, she cared for the child. Caring was something that never came naturally to her, not before Eve.

Oksana sits in her train seat, head reeling from the whirlwind that has been the past few days. In the space of less than 48 hours she had been reunited with her immediate family, formed the start of a good relationship with her half-brother Bor’ka, confronted her mother about what she did to her all those years ago and then in a not so shocking turn of events, resorted to killing her mother and burning down the family house. The fire had no doubt resulted in the death of everyone in her family but little Bor’ka and her full brother Pyotr.

“Crocodile Rock” blasted through her headphones as she relived her most exhilarating and life changing kill yet, the way she saw her mother’s life force drain from her body as she choked her to death with her bare hands. Never had she felt so alive, yet so numb to the chain of events one of her kills had just set into motion. After all of those years of never feeling good enough, wondering why she was abandoned as a child, she expected some form of relief to flood over her, she had finally put an end to the woman who created and destroyed her, but nothing came. It was just empty. She had left Bor’ka with enough money to fend for himself but knew that she could never face anybody from that village again, all she had left now was Eve.

She thought of the poison her mother spat at her,

_“You will not bring your darkness to this house”._

The way she judged Oksana after abandoning her so early on in life, as if she had an idea of what type of person she was so early on,

_“You were never a happy person”, her mother chuckled. “You were bad from the beginning; you didn’t cry as a baby”._

The way she blamed Oksana for all of the misfortune she experienced,

_“You ruined me, you took everything from me, you took him from me. You could control him; he would do anything for you because you… had a darkness!”_

After those venomous words were spat at her by someone who was supposed to care for her and nurture her, she realised something. This darkness within her wasn’t entirely the result of years of being bounced around orphanages, wasn’t singularly caused by the lack of love and attention from her mother in her formative years. She was this way because it was bred into her. Now her mother had removed her mask, those psychopathic tendencies Oksana displayed could only be attributed to her.

Oksana let her hands drift slowly over her face, her arms, her chest, the places her mother had hit her as she chastised her that night, those words playing over and over in her head, louder and louder. For the first time in years, she cried, truly broken down. There was no escaping from the effects this confrontation had on her, she needed somebody to help her numb the pain.

Oksana always knew women would be her downfall, however she thought her heart would be broken by one of the beautiful women she always seemed to become infatuated with, she never wanted to give her mother the power to break her, but it had happened, nonetheless. She knew what she needed now. She needed her Eve.


	2. Flowers?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve gets back to London and sets off on her hunt for Villanelle but something stops her in her tracks before she's even left her apartment block.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was literally expecting like 3 people to read this so I'm glad people have enjoyed it! Here's the next chapter.

Eve bursts through the door of her small London apartment and throws her bags to the floor, running to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. It was 2:30am and the last few days had been long and restless. Come to think of it, since Villanelle came into her life, almost every day had been long and restless. Instead of taking some time to settle back into her apartment and reply to the many messages of consolation from concerned friends that made her phone light up, she tugs her wild hair into a messy bun and throws her phone, purse and keys into her jacket pockets. She took a moment to think before leaving the apartment, she had gained some insight into the way Villanelle moves about from their experience in Rome: when she is not using the cover of one of her many personas she turns to the darkness of night for cover, often skulking around unnoticed in the shadows.

Eve didn’t know where this search would take her as she was being fuelled by lack of sleep, adrenaline and sheer determination to hunt down Villanelle. This time, she wanted to be the one to throw her off her game. She ran down the stairs, opening the main entrance to her apartment block quickly but just as she was about to dash out, she was stopped dead in her tracks, her jaw dropping instantly.

Of all the people she could’ve bumped into when leaving her apartment block, she didn’t expect this at all. In front of her stood Villanelle, carrying a large brown holdall and a huge bunch of red roses. Eve was truly taken aback. When she had imagined what it would be like when she eventually tracked down Villanelle, she pictured her being smug because she knew she’d once again caught her attention and given Eve a reason to chase after her. But the woman she saw before her now was not smug, she looked drained, vulnerable. It took less than two seconds for Eve to snap out of her state, why was she pitying the woman who had killed Niko in cold blood? Suddenly, Eve lunges towards Villanelle, in a state of rage and raw grief, causing her to drop her bag and the flowers she was holding so carefully as she’s pushed against the wall with surprising ease.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!”

“Eve… I came to… to bring you some flowers...” she responds with a weak smile, happy to see her beautiful Eve again but confused by the greeting she had received, talk about mixed messages.

“Flowers?” Eve chuckles in disbelief, “You’ve got some nerve showing up on my doorstep with fucking flowers after what you did!”

Villanelle fumbles, she is not her usual confident self after the weekend’s events. “I… I didn’t do anything! I wanted to-” she tries to explain herself but is cut off as Eve pulls her away from the wall by her soaked denim jumpsuit and then slams her back into it, hard and angry.

“You didn’t do anything?! How do you explain this then?” She pulls out the small tag she still has in the pocket of her trousers, pushing it into Villanelle’s face for her to examine. Eve had not planned their next interaction with Villanelle like this, she wanted to be calm and collected, she wanted to scare Villanelle, but the way the two had met so unexpectedly had thrown her off guard.

There was a new expression painted on Villanelle’s face, one that Eve didn’t recognise despite the amount of time she had spent thinking of the way she was able to contort her face to portray a whole spectrum of emotions. “What is this? Eve, is this another one of your guessing games? You know I don’t like to be chall-”

“You fucking know what it is! Why go after him? Niko never hurt anybody; he was never an obstacle in any of your plans.” Villanelle’s expression didn’t change, she was still confused although she was amused by Eve’s obliviousness, of course Niko was an obstacle. Niko stood in the way of the one thing Villanelle wanted but had not been able to obtain straight away, the one desire that she has not been able to fulfil: Eve.

“I never went after the moustache! I have been… not here!”

“Well obviously you weren’t _here_. You’ve been in Poland, hunting down and killing my ex-husband. The one part of my life that you hadn’t managed to irreversibly ruin yet.”

Villanelle’s eyes widen, so he really was gone. Her brain was a battlefield of emotions right now, still intensely hurt by her mother’s words, hurt that Eve was being so hostile towards her but there was also a spark of relief. Even though Eve seemed upset right now, Villanelle was convinced that the sadness was due to the fact that Eve had to let go of that part of her life rather than the fact that the man she used to love was dead, knowing that she would eventually have to accept their twisted love now there was no Niko.

“Eve I didn’t do anything, please… let go of me, let me talk to you, explain why it couldn’t have been me. I know you think that I’d do anything to make you mine, but I would never… hurt you.”

Eve pauses for a millisecond before responding. “You murdered my best friend after knowing me for less than a month. You manipulated me because you wanted to see if I had the ability to kill, the ability to be like you. You fucking shot me in the back and left me for dead!” She pauses again. “In fact, you didn’t even know me then, you just wanted my attention, you'll do anything to get what you want.”

“I wouldn’t kill Niko! I know how much he means… meant to you”.

While Villanelle talks Eve is only half listening, the other half of her attention is being channelled into discerning the emotions that are spilling out as the other woman, pressed against the wall, pleads her case. Her grip loosens slightly as she sees that fleck of something she has never seen in Villanelle before tonight, she sees vulnerability.

“You really don’t know anything about this?” Eve slips out of her act for a second before putting those walls back up and tightening her grip on the wet denim. “You’re lying to me. Why should I believe you?”.

“Eve… please talk to me.” For the first time since the Villanelle came crashing into Eve’s life, she looks genuinely tired, emotionally exhausted. “Please just… listen.” Eve can practically hear the pain and desperation through Villanelle’s thick accent and after a moment of consideration she lets go of her.

“Why should I listen to you? What could you possibly have to say that would be of value to me right now? If it's not a confession or a promise that you're going to leave me alone and stop screwing my life up, then I don’t want to hear it. I’m fucking tired.”

“I couldn’t have killed Niko; I know you’ve got it into your head that it was me, but I swear… I’ve been somewhere else!”

“You found out that I went back to Poland to try and sort things out between us, you probably got on the same fucking flight as me. You watched me, followed me and saw how happy I was to be seeing him again, but you just couldn’t let me have that could you? Nobody is allowed to have nice things in their life apart from you, isn’t that right, Oksana?”

Villanelle shudders at the use of her given name, it reminds her of her mother. What Eve is saying sounds exactly like something her mother would have come out with if she had let her live any longer.

“Don’t fucking call me that.” She spits back, “you think I’m a monster, that I have no feelings at all.” Villanelle is angry now, Eve repeating the things her mother said to hurt her only serves to snap her out of the vulnerable state she had come to Eve in; the walls were back up for now.

Eve scoffs, rolling her eyes before responding,

“Yes! And I have good evidence to back up that claim.”

“Eve, I was in Russia this weekend. Yes, I knew you were going to Poland to chase after that piece of fudge you called your husband, but I know you well enough to figure out that even if he miraculously managed to get past whatever it is that's stopping him from giving you what you need, you’d get bored of him again before too long and end up tracking me down. It's how you work, it's what you do.”

Villanelle’s words caused Eve to falter, unable to come up with a response before she started speaking again,

“I have had plenty of opportunities to get rid of him, but I knew you'd never forgive me if I did. I may be a killer but I’m not an idiot. Anyway, look on the bright side,” she gently brings a hand up to Eve’s face in an attempt to soften her, her thumb gently stroking along her cheekbone, “you’re free now Eve, you can be whoever you want.” This was Villanelle’s trademark strategy when it came to Eve, using the power she has over her to get what she wants, even if that is just to be taken care of.

There is a flash of excitement in Eve’s eyes but instead of acknowledging that she pushes Villanelle away from her.

“Don’t speak like that! I was never… imprisoned… I’ve always been my own person anyway. Stop fucking talking like you know me, Villanelle. You know the person you want me to be. You want me to be so broken down, so fragile that I think you're the only one who can save me. Well, I am not fragile, and I certainly will not be broken down, not again. I do not need to be saved, especially not by somebody like you. You don’t _save_ people Villanelle, you destroy them.”

“Oh, come on Eve, you don’t believe a word you just said. I can see it in your eyes, we are the same. Like I said to you in Rome: I’m not _with_ other people when I’m with them, you know?” She takes another step back towards Eve, catching her off guard and forcing the shorter woman to stumble back against the opposite wall. Her accent is thick, her voice light but raspy. “It's only when I’m with you, in your presence, that I feel something.”

Villanelle raises the hand that Eve pushed off her cheek and places it on the wall, to the side of Eve’s head. She leans in closer, knowing exactly what she’s doing. No matter how much Eve tries to deny it, Villanelle has this strange effect on her, making her more malleable than she’s ever been before.

“Stop that. Stop doing that.” Eve finds herself slipping into a state of weakness as she is reminded of their confrontation on the bus only a few days ago. She glances down at Villanelle’s soft lips for a millisecond, hoping the other woman doesn’t notice. She remembers how they felt and, if truth be told, she wishes that moment could’ve lasted forever.

“I understand, you’re upset. But I came here tonight to see you, to talk to you like I know you wanted me to when you first started following me.”

“I don’t want to speak to you tonight. I don’t want to see you.” There it is. Ten minutes ago, Eve had set out to avenge her ex-husband but as soon as Villanelle turned on the charm, she was putty in her hands. Although Eve was sending her away, it felt like a win for Villanelle; she had calmed Eve down and if she carried on, she would soon be invited upstairs to be alone with and talk to Eve, she could see it in her eyes.

“That's not true. Your lips say one thing, but your eyes say something completely different,” Villanelle speaks softly, leaning in to whisper into Eve’s ear, “you want me to stay, you always want me to stay.”

Eve freezes as she feel’s Villanelle’s breath tickle her neck; she smells sweet and the warmth of her body on the cold night makes Eve want to do nothing more than pull her closer. She then makes a fatal mistake, looking straight into Villanelle’s hazel eyes. Villanelle senses this moment of weakness and leans in, gently placing a kiss on Eve’s neck, just below her ear. Eve can’t help it, her head rolls back slightly against the wall, embracing the feel of warm breath on her neck for a moment before Villanelle steps back.

“Very well then.”

Eve is taken aback, feeling significantly colder as the contact is broken. “What?”

“I’m going Eve, you don’t want to see me tonight, remember?” Villanelle begins to walk away, picking her bag up but leaving the discarded flowers on the floor. Eve knows she can’t call her back after that performance but in this moment, she wants nothing more than to do just that, however angry it makes her. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back before long. Sleep well, sweet Eve… oh, and take your hair down. You're free, remember?”

And just like that, as quickly as she had arrived, Villanelle left. Once again, Eve was left leaning against the wall in shock, her mind racing with a thousand emotions, all travelling at a million miles an hour. Villanelle had done it again: using the most basic weapons she had in her arsenal she managed to confuse Eve and leave her desperate for more. Whether it was more information, more conversation or more physical contact, Eve just knew she had to have more of this enigma of a woman.

When she was sure that Villanelle had left, she let herself breathe, her hands shaking, which she convinced herself was due to the fact that she hadn’t eaten in at least a day, that it was cold outside and that she was running on barely any sleep. However, Eve knew that it was her, it was always her. She looked around and bent down to pick up the flowers, discarding a few of the damaged ones on the floor and taking them up to her apartment. 

Once she had locked up, she began to inspect the flowers, they really were beautiful and there was a small note inside that simply said, “Thinking of you, always xx” She had not one doubt in her mind that the colour of them was a call back to where they had first kissed, on the bus.

Suddenly, she had an idea. She quickly pulled out the small piece of card from her pocket and held it side by side with the card from the flowers. It was that moment when she realised, the handwriting was completely different. The frantically scrawled “still got it” looked too angular to have been written by Villanelle, who’s handwriting was more flowing and softer. Maybe, just maybe, Villanelle was telling the truth after all. With that thought in her head she put the flowers on display on the kitchen shelf and took herself off to the bathroom, taking her hair down and ruffling it as she looked in the mirror. Something in her had changed since their reunion; the state of shock she had been in for such a negative reason was turning into shock for an entirely more positive reason.

The woman she saw in the mirror in front of her was a new Eve, an Eve that was free.


End file.
